


Hero of the Emeralds

by mdalkirk



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdalkirk/pseuds/mdalkirk
Summary: It's been a year since the incident with Eggman in San Francisco, and Sonic has been settling into his new life with friends on Earth. Elsewhere, Mobius is facing destruction and the people need the Chaos Emeralds in the hands of a hero to save it. Tails has tracked down the person he believes can be that hero, and travels to Earth to find him.
Relationships: Knuckles the Echidna/Original Character(s), Miles "Tails" Prower & Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower & Tom Wachowski, Sonic the Hedgehog & Tom Wachowski
Comments: 20
Kudos: 177





	1. Finding the Hero

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story expanding on the universe of the Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) movie. It takes inspiration from existing Sonic Lore but does not always follow it.

Tails waited until night fell to sneak into the professor’s laboratory. He was allowed to help out there and put together gadgets, including the tracker he was about to steal. It had activated several times over a few days, emitting an energy signal stronger than anything that had been observed so far, but they were always short-lived only active few seconds. Several months passed, and it remained dormant. It was dismissed as a malfunction, the zone it was coming from was not even advanced. There was no reason a person able to activate the Chaos Emeralds would be there. Efforts were refocused on pursuing more likely leads, and no matter how much Tails insisted his tracker found the one they were looking for, nobody listened.

Normally, Tails wouldn’t have had the courage to do something like this. Breaking the rules and going off on his own with a Power Ring to a new world was dangerous. But things were getting dire on Mobius.

Tails picked up the tracker and heard footsteps upstairs making their way towards the stairway leading to the lab.

A voice called out, “Tails? Is that you down there?”

Panicking, he threw his Power Ring and thought of the zone he tracked the signal to months ago. The ring rapidly expanded, revealing a beautiful green landscape on the other side. There was no time to second guess if this was the right place, and he stepped through.

* * *

“Woohoo!” Sonic yelled out as he ran down the highway, dodging through cars and leaving only a blue bur behind him. He screeched to a halt in front of Tom’s cop car, stationed at its usual spot.

“Ice cream delivery!” Sonic said, excitedly extending his arms towards Tom who still sitting in the car.

“I think you forgot the ice cream,” Tom said nodding toward the pair of mostly empty sugar cones in Sonic’s gloved hands.

Tom was certain there were a couple of scoops melting in the sun right outside _Ice Paradise_. Again.

“Oops, guess I went a little too fast…they gave me a new flavor today, too.” Sonic said, sounding depressed.

“That's okay buddy, I like the cones too,” and he took one of the cones.

Sonic’s expression reverted to excited wonder almost instantly and he popped one of the cones in its entirety into his mouth.

“Sonic, be careful not to go so fast you use your powers. Robotnik might be gone, but you don’t want to go drawing attention from the government again by knocking satellites out of the sky.”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I haven’t used them since we sent Eggman packing!” Sonic whined, “Besides the Prez loves me”

Tom shook his head, it had been a whirlwind of a week when the President had visited Green Hills to meet Sonic. It had been part of the deal to keep quiet about the whole incident a year ago.

“What about the people who chased you before you came here? We don’t want them showing up on Earth. Robotnik was bad enough, but he was just another human. Who was after you before, anyway? You’ve never talked about them.”

Sonic suddenly looked anxious. Sounding unsure he said, “Green Hills is so far away, there’s no way they’d find me….Okay, I’m off! See you at home!” and Sonic dashed away to finish his daily routine.

* * *

Tails flew high above the trees, eyeing the device which had begun to track a faint signal. He knew it! Now that he was actually in the Zone he was able to pick it up even when it was weak. Scanning the landscape, he saw a wind blast through the trees in a thin line. A blue shape emerged from the forest out onto a large diamond-shaped field. It then ran along the edge of the diamond in irregular patterns.

He landed far away enough that he hoped he wouldn’t be seen. Could this be the Hero they were looking for? He crawled up behind a bush and peeked over.

There seemed to be several people in the field, but never at the same time. Every time he blinked one of them showed up in a new spot. He scrunched up his face, trying to concentrate on the figures. He realized it was just one hedgehog moving very fast between the small white bumps on the ground, throwing a ball to itself. It was the fastest person Tails had ever seen, maybe the fastest thing alive.

Tails barely noticed that the tracker was beeping more loudly now that he had gotten closer. It must have been loud enough for the hedgehog to hear because he stopped and looked over in his direction.

“Who’s there?” the hedgehog called out.

Tails shrank behind the hedge, too scared to move. The wind rushed into his ears for a moment and stopped. He gulped and looked up slowly.

The hedgehog was smiling and asked, “Whatcha doin' down there buddy?” 

End of Chapter 1


	2. Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tails tries to convince Sonic to go with him back to Mobius.

“Eep!” Tails yelled out, stumbling backward from the bush.

“Woah, calm down I didn’t mean to scare ya,” the blue hedgehog said. “My name is Sonic. Who’re you?”

“I’m Tails,” the little fox managed to get out.

The tracker was beeping louder than ever with Sonic standing right next to it.

“What’s that all about?” He asked, crouching next to tails in an instant, looking at the tracker on the ground a few feet away.

Tails wordlessly opened his mouth at the sudden appearance of the hedgehog next to him and looked utterly uncomfortable. He hurriedly crawled away from Sonic and over to the tracker, picking it up. He rotated some dials, pressed a few buttons, and then it finally went quiet. “It— I was looking for you! I think. Maybe. You have to come with me back home.” The fox looked at him expectantly, his breathing calming down slightly.

Memories from his old life returned — Longclaw warning him of people who were hunting him down for his powers. She died protecting him from people like that. Protecting his secret, so he could be safe. So he could be alone. This fox wasn’t from earth, but he didn’t seem like the hunters from his old nightmares.

“Sorry buddy, I can’t go back with you. But hey, I bet we can have a lot of fun together around here instead. Come on, I’ll show you!” Before Tails could respond, sonic grabbed his hand and ran off, dragging him in the air behind him.

* * *

“Aaaaaaa——” Tails was screaming as he was dragged at an unreal speed. They stopped just a few seconds after they began, but were in an entirely new place. It was a small room with a ton of toys and random knick-knacks scattered around. There was a large red bean bag in the center of the floor and posters plastered to the wall sloppily with some tape. Tails hadn’t seen so many fun looking things in a while, and he forgot about his mission. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with all the stuff in the room.

Sonic was rolled up in a ball and bouncing on a small trampoline when a door opened downstairs.

He sprang back into standing form and said, “Oh! Tom’s back. Come on, you gotta meet him!”

Tails put down what Sonic had told him was a helicopter and timidly followed him down the attic stairs. He felt silly and ashamed for letting himself get caught up playing with toys when everyone was doing their best to help Mobius back home.

“Tom!”, Sonic ran ahead of Tails and jumped up and hugged the large Earth man. “What took you so long?” He whined.

“Sonic, This is the time I always get home during the week. You’re just bored because Maddie has been working late and hasn’t been able to play with — who is that?” He was staring at Tails.

“Oh! This is Tails. He’s a new friend. Right, Tails?”

“Oh.. um… I…” Tails slowly hid most of his body behind the doorway to the living room. He wasn’t sure what to do in this situation. Normally, you weren’t supposed to visit planets outside of the Power Ring network. There were a lot of worlds that freely traveled between themselves, but Earth was far from all of them. He probably was breaking some kind of rule by letting one of the people from this world see him. The Professor would definitely scold him if he ever found out.

Tom turned his gaze to Tails but spoke to Sonic, “So… Is he from where you’re from? He looks kind of like you. In an alien fox sort of way. Wait, does he have two tails?!”

Tails instinctively hid his tails behind himself.

Sonic rushed over and brought Tails out into the open with him, hand resting on his shoulder. “He’s from — uh... Oops, I guess I never asked. Where are you from, Tails?”

“I-I’m from Mobius. Please, you have to help me.”

Sonic recognized the name immediately. Mobius was the same place he and Longclaw had lived together. He never knew there were people like Tails who lived there too. Maybe they lived on a different island.

But he wasn’t supposed to go back there.

“Are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need one of those rings to get back home?” Tom asked.

“N-no I still have a ring left.” he looked at Sonic. “Please, you have to come home with me. You’re the only one who can help us”

“It’s because of his powers, isn’t it?” Tom said. “But Sonic is just a kid… what exactly is going on in your world?”

Tails wasn’t sure where to begin. Sonic seemed to trust Tom, so maybe it was okay to talk about it in front of him.

“Mobius has been falling apart slowly for years… ever since the Master Emerald was broken. Land fell out of the sky, and holes opened up in the ground and swallowed the King’s castle. The weather has gotten all crazy so it’s not safe to go to a lot of places anymore. Most people have left already with the Power Rings, but some of us stay to try and figure out how to fix the Emerald. Like the Professor!” Tails was rambling, hoping he was making sense and continued, “If we can just do that, everything will go back to normal.”

Sonic’s mouth was hanging open, “Wow, that sounds awful Tails! But what can I do?”

“W-well, the Professor thinks if we can find the Chaos Emeralds, we can fix the Master Emerald. But, they don’t emit any energy anymore.” Tails pulled out his tracker and turned it back on, the beeping resuming.

“A year ago, there was a strong energy signal and we were able to see the signatures of some of the emeralds while it was active. But it only lasted a few minutes and we lost track of them again.”

Tails sounded more confident as he dived into more technical details “I was able to isolate and profile the original signal. It came from somewhere really far away, here on Earth. I thought if I could just get close enough I’d be able to pick it up again and we could find the source. But not even the Professor believed me, he thought it wasn’t worth using a power ring.” Tails felt guilty, grasping a single power ring in his hand.

“You think I’m making that thing go haywire, and I can somehow find these Emeralds if I go back with you to Mobius?” Sonic popped in front of tails and poked the tracker display. It beeped even more rapidly.

Sonic crossed his arms and looked deep in thought for a moment. “Okay, if I’m able to help I will— ”

“Woah — Wait a second Sonic, let’s think about this.” Tom interrupted, “It seemed like Robotnik was able to use your quills to do some crazy stuff with his robots, it’s not really clear what the extent of your powers are. You came here to hide if you go to this place, won’t you be in danger?”

“Please, Sonic, you have to help us. This is life or death, you’re the only hope we have,” Tails pleaded.

Tom started to object again, but his mind was already made up.

“I’m going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we will get to see Knuckles and learn more about Mobius!


	3. Enter Knuckles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Echidna named Knuckles hunts for the shards of the Master Emerald in the ruins of Castle Knothole

**Meanwhile on Mobius…**

Deep underneath the ruins of Castle Knothole, a red echidna wearing climbing gloves adorned with large spikes on each knuckle was grasping the edge of a foot-wide ledge that ran along the south wall of the cavern. “Heka! Bring the light down here,” he called out.

Another young echidna slid down a rope from above, her pale orange dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail, kept in place with a white headband. The area surrounding them was illuminated by a lantern tied to her waist. “Do you think its here, Knuckles?”

“It’s here, I know it.” Knuckles confirmed. Even with the light, nothing was visible where he was looking but rocky cavern wall.

“Well… your instincts haven’t been wrong yet,” she said, exhaling as she spoke. The rope was digging into her waist and was eager to get out of here. They had been crawling and climbing through these twisted caverns for hours. Kril was probably asleep at their rendezvous point.

Knuckles began digging into the wall with his spiked gloves, strong punches chipping away at the stone. It was only a few seconds later the tip of a green gemstone emerged and reflected the light down the stone wall. Heka’s eyes shone with excitement, green as the emerald they were about to liberate from the rock. “Finally!” she exclaimed.

Knuckles yanked out the shard and put it in a satchel that was strapped over his shoulder.

“This was it. It’s the only one down here still.” Now that he had the shard, his mind had quieted. The emerald’s silent song had ended. “Meet you up top.” And he began to climb back up, leaving the rope to Heka who preferred not to claw at dirty cave walls.

As they neared the surface, moonlight illuminated the ground beneath them and Heka extinguished the lantern. The last thing they needed was the knights who still guarded this castle like ghosts to find them with a Master Emerald shard. Castle Knothole had been abandoned long ago, more and more of it fell into the gaping hole in the ground they were in now. But people still respected their King, They reached flat ground about fifty feet below the castle, where the old library room had collapsed. The small opening they emerged from had been difficult to find as castle stone had fallen and covered it up, but the Emerald’s song led him there and they dug through, only to find miles of natural caves ahead of them before they reached the shard.

“You go first, I’ll be right behind you,” Knuckles told her.

She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Ok just keep it down and don’t let them see you!”

Heka found the rope she had left when they climbed down and started to ascend. Knuckles punched his spiked gloves into the wall for an anchor and began climbing.

Just as Heka reached the surface, Knuckles hit a loose part of the wall and it went tumbling loudly down to the caverns below, he had to quickly find another stable place to keep himself from falling too.

The distant sounds of voices and clanking metal boots told them the guards were on their way.

“I’m outta here, come on!” Heka yelled and ran off towards the forest line.

Knuckles finished climbing to the top, but it was already too late. Three armored guards were running towards him. He may be able to outrun them, they were wearing heavy armor after all. But that’s what a coward would do. It had been a while since he had a good fight.

“Stop! Identify yourself” one of them yelled as they approached.

“Hmph.” Knuckles crossed his arms, “Does it matter?”

“He’s one of them! For the King!” And they rushed at him, swords drawn. Knuckles turned and jumped, gliding towards a tall rocky pillar. One of the guards didn’t stop himself fast enough as he realized there was just a dark pit, and he fell over the edge screaming. He managed to grab hold of Heka’s rope before he hit the bottom.

Knuckles leaped off the pillar and glided back over towards the guards, diving towards, his fist making contact with a helmet, knocking him to the ground. As Knuckles was trying to get himself off the guard he just dive-bombed, the remaining one had slashed at him with his sword, cutting into his arm.

“Ugh!” Knuckles had leaped back, but not fast enough.

The guard raised his sword again, but his head suddenly jerked forward as a rock bounced off the back. Heka was behind him with a slingshot. Knuckles took the opportunity to deliver a quick flurry of blows. The guard staggered, then slumped to the ground, dropping his sword at this side.

“Come on, let’s go already!” Heka said and they both ran off to the rendezvous point.

* * *

Kril was waiting for them. He was a large Echidna with arms as thick as Knuckle’s head. He kept his dreadlocks short and they were tipped with white. he raised an eyebrow at the cut on Knuckle’s arm. “Get caught again did you?” Knuckles usually managed to get away with bruises or fractured bones when he went up against Knothole’s guards, but there had been one or two times that left a scar. This would probably be another one.

“No. I didn’t get caught, they lost.”

Heka rolled her eyes, “You beat them up, but they’ll probably just be even madder when they wake up you know. I don’t know why they guard that dusty old tomb of a castle, there’s not even any shard left there.”

Kril, who was older than Knuckles and much larger and taller, put his hand on Knuckles' head and messed up his hair, “Well anyway, not like those Mobians need a reason to hate Echidnas. If they’re dumb enough to think we were the ones who broke their precious Master Emerald, let them.”

“Do you think we actually did?” Heka asked. She was only a small child when the war had happened between the Echidnas and the Mobians. The Master Emerald used to live on some neutral ground but one day it had shattered. Both sides blamed each other and claimed innocence. Then they started to fight over the shards.

“Of course not!” Kril said haughtily. “But we should use them to fix our homeworld and leave this place for good.”

“Queen Tikal doesn’t think so,” Heka said hesitantly. Echidnas in Galana’s crew weren’t supposed to mention the Queen. Tikal stubbornly insisted that the Master Emerald should be restored and its power untouched, not used to restore their ruined homeworld from generates ago. Mobius was their home now, so she said. Others, like Galana, didn’t agree. Knuckles didn’t care about politics, but Galana recognized his strength and gave him a place where he belonged.

“Ugh, drop it.” Knuckles said gruffly. He opened his pouch and handed Kril the green emerald shard.

“Good job, Knuckles. Just in time, too.”

“What do you mean? Is there already another lead?” Knuckles asked.

“Yeah. A big one. Galana tracked down a research lab where the Mobians have been hoarding the emeralds. They’re probably planning on using the power to wipe us out. You need to go there and get them. By any means necessary.” And he handed Knuckles a bracelet. “Latest from the tech-heads. This will let you store up power in your glove and release it all at once.” Knuckles excitedly put it on.

Heka looked uncomfortable, “Kril, that could really do some damage and kill someone..” As much as Knuckles and she had gotten into altercations with the Mobians, they had never actually killed one of them like Kril had and the others had. They were all older.

“Knuckles is an adult now! It’s time he got into the fight instead of going on scavenger hunts. You need to grow up too, Heka.” Kril said, laughing. Knuckles laughed too, not listening, too focused on his new weapon and daydreaming about how he’d use it.

“So where am I going?” Knuckles asked.

“Here, the location is in this datapad.” Kril handed him a flat screen.

“There aren’t any military personnel there that we know of, it’s all tech-heads. The idiots are stockpiling the Emeralds not realizing we have someone like you who can pinpoint their location.” It was true that Knuckle’s ability was unusual, not even the other Echidna had it. When he was close enough, he could hear what almost felt like a siren’s song, luring him closer and closer to where the Master Emerald pieces were. As he got closer, the song was louder in his head. Galana had taken a great interest in him when she found out and had been sending him on missions ever since he was a kid. The tips of shard locations didn’t come in often, but when they did Knuckles always found them.

* * *

It had been a few weeks since Knuckles had been sent out on his mission. He finally arrived at the location in the datapad and had been scoping it out for a few days, gliding high above. There were so many songs that he was having a hard time separating them to follow a specific shard’s tune. So he waited, watching the rabbit professor who darted about taking notes and looking at large machines all day. He was getting impatient after no shards had turned up yet. Were they underground again?

He decided he needed to get a closer look, and started to glide down when he saw a Power Ring portal open in the middle of the compound. A fox and a blue hedgehog stepped out, they looked like kids around his age.

He narrowed his eyes and landed well away from the buildings. Anyone with Power Rings still had to be important, but they didn’t look like they were very strong. Knuckles looked down at his bracelet and prepared himself for a fight. Nothing was going to keep him from restoring the Master Emerald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter, the trio will finally meet -- but will they be enemies or friends?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a new writer, and this is the first work I've published anywhere, please feel free to leave any feedback, it will all be appreciated! Will be updating weekly.


End file.
